Chapter 9: 1F Hidden (2) |
Mental Concentration was possible even while time was stopped.
Willpower recovered even while time was stopped.
Conclusion.
I could use skills with virtually no restrictions!
For Magic Type skills, the cast time was essentially erased.
All I had to do was stop time and perform the Mental Concentration.
Running out of Willpower was never going to be an issue either.
If it ran dry, I could just stop time and wait for it to recover.
The only real limitation was a skill’s cooldown.
No, that couldn’t be right.
The cooldown timer would need real time to pass.
Still, on the off chance, I decided to check.
I waited a full hundred minutes with time frozen.
[Willpower: 100/100]
After topping off my Willpower, I released the time stop.
I glanced around.
Now that the Goblin Knight was dead, the Crossbow Goblin should be popping out any moment.
“…?”
What’s that?
A small boulder tucked in the corner of the cavern was shifting.
Then a Crossbow Goblin crawled out of a passage that had been hidden behind it.
Last time, I’d wondered where the hell it had suddenly appeared from. So that’s how it made its entrance?
My eyes met the Crossbow Goblin’s.
It frantically tried to level its crossbow at me, so I stopped time.
Alright, here’s a present for you too.
I finished the Mental Concentration, released time, and fired off a fireball the instant it resumed.
The Crossbow Goblin exploded spectacularly with the blast.
[Flame Strike (0:27)]
The message appeared the moment I thought about checking the skill cooldown.
I stopped time right there.
[Flame Strike (0:27)]
The number hadn’t decreased.
So the cooldown wasn’t affected after all.
Honestly, it would’ve been absurd if even that worked.
Then again, the Mental Concentration and Willpower recovery alone were already absurd enough.
I take back what I said about Magic Type being garbage.
With things working like this, Magic Type skills were a perfect fit for me.
No, perfect didn’t even begin to cover it.
It was a flat-out broken synergy.
The weaknesses of Magic Type skills were the Mental Concentration requirement and the massive Willpower drain… and both of those weaknesses had just been wiped clean.
In game terms, it was like having infinite mana and instant casting on every skill.
Flame Strike had a thirty-second cooldown, which meant from now on, I could unleash a skill of this caliber every thirty seconds with zero constraints.
‘My mind’s going to get a little tired, though.’
I gathered my thoughts.
Come to think of it, the clear message hadn’t appeared.
I hadn’t entered Repeat Clearing for Magic Stones; I’d come back to check the Hidden Route.
Since it wasn’t ending, there must be something more here.
[Would you like to exit the Tower?]
The message popped up the moment I thought about leaving.
Alright, I can leave whenever I want.
Let me look around a bit more first.
The boss room was a dead-end cavern.
Going back through the passage I’d come from would only take me to where I started.
There really wasn’t any extra space to speak of…
“…”
The passage the Crossbow Goblin had crawled out of came into view.
Could it be that?
I moved closer.
The blast from my skill had exposed the entrance more than before.
I got down on my stomach, stuck my head inside, and peered in.
A tunnel sloped downward like a rabbit hole.
An underground passage?
After a moment’s hesitation, I decided to go in.
I had a gut feeling this was it.
There was no reason to expect any real danger.
I could bail out at any time, after all.
“Hup.”
I squeezed my body into the tunnel.
It was just barely wide enough for one person to crawl through.
I inched my way down the gently sloping decline on my hands and knees.
It was pitch black ahead; I couldn’t see a thing.
With nothing to see, my ears sharpened instead.
I was getting a little spooked.
Surely an arrow wasn’t going to come flying at my face out of nowhere.
‘Should’ve gone in backward…’
Fortunately, the tunnel ended quickly.
A wide, brightly lit space appeared ahead.
I emerged from the tunnel and straightened up, then flinched.
It was another cavern, its opposite wall riddled with holes just like the one I’d crawled through.
Someone was sitting in the center of the cavern.
For a second, I thought it was a goblin, but it wasn’t. It was a person.
A… person?
I tensed up.
The figure hadn’t moved an inch.
“…Hello?”
I called out cautiously.
No response.
I edged closer for a better look.
The figure wore robes that brought to mind a wizard.
When I caught a glimpse of the face beneath the hood, I recoiled.
Its skin looked as though it had rotted and was sloughing off, a grotesque, nightmarish visage.
The old man with the melting face sat cross-legged, eyes closed.
I studied him in silence.
So… what am I supposed to do here?
A goblin I could handle. But a person showing up like this? I had no idea what the game wanted from me.
‘Do I just wait until he opens his eyes?’
Could this old man actually be an enemy?
Getting any closer felt like a bad idea.
That was when the old man opened his eyes.
His gaze turned toward me.
A voice like metal scraping against metal seeped out.
“I wondered what all the commotion was up there… Child, what purpose brings you here?”
I was at a loss for words.
Purpose? Hell if I know…
“You don’t seem to be imperial soldiers, and a lone adventurer at that? You’ve hastened your own demise. Since you’ve already crawled in like a rat, I might as well use you as a test subject.”
“Excuse me?”
Test subject?
I couldn’t understand a word of what he was saying, but one thing was crystal clear.
My life was in danger.
The instant I determined he was hostile, I backed away and began casting.
I stopped time, completed the Mental Concentration, and hurled a fireball straight at the old man.
BOOM!
Crimson flames engulfed him.
Did that finish him?
The smoke cleared and the old man’s form was revealed.
Impossibly, he was unscathed.
A translucent barrier was deployed around him.
What is that? A barrier?
“…A mage? How?”
For some reason, the old man sounded just as startled, muttering under his breath.
My one and only skill, my strongest weapon, had just been blocked. I was still trying to figure out my next move when the old man suddenly bellowed.
“Come out, all of you! Kill him!”
…All of you?
Moments later, footsteps came rushing in.
Goblins poured out of the tunnels lining the cavern walls in droves.
What the hell is this now?
I nearly jumped out of my skin.
SKREEEE-!
Dozens of goblins charging from every direction.
[Flame Strike (0:01)]
I confirmed the cooldown had cycled and immediately stopped time.
No, a few I could handle, but several dozen was a completely different story.
If I got swarmed and caught a stray blade while fighting in the thick of them, I wasn’t going to walk away unscathed.
There was no reason to take a dangerous fight.
‘You little bastards are going to make me wait a hundred minutes.’
Once again embracing the virtue of patience, I waited for my Willpower to refill.
[Willpower: 100/100]
After a long wait, it was back to full.
I completed the Mental Concentration, released time, and immediately launched a fireball.
Right at the densest cluster of goblins.
KA-BOOOM!
Chunks of flesh scattered through the air.
The goblins caught in the direct hit vanished without a trace, and the ones nearby were sent flying in every direction.
A pungent, acrid stench stabbed at my nostrils.
Looked like about two-thirds of them had been wiped out in a single blast.
I moved to clean up the stragglers.
Darting around, I slashed through them one by one, snick snick.
It was over fast.
After finishing off every last goblin, I turned my attention back to the old man.
“…”
Uh, excuse me… what are you doing?
That was what I wanted to ask.
In the middle of all that chaos, the old man was still sitting in the same spot, eyes closed as if meditating.
His barrier was still up around him, so there wasn’t much I could do.
Should I go up and whack it with my sword?
Either way, it seemed like I needed to kill this mage to end this…
That was when the old man’s eyes snapped open.
At the same instant, a dark energy blanketed the cavern.
I stumbled backward in surprise and nearly fell.
The floor had suddenly turned into a viscous swamp and was sucking my feet down.
‘Wh-what the?’
As I floundered in panic, the old man cackled and shouted.
“You insolent little whelp! Didn’t your master teach you how mages duel? Standing there like a fool while I completed my spell!”
Tentacle-like things rose from the blackened swamp that the floor had become.
With my feet trapped, I couldn’t move.
Struggling only made the mire swallow my legs deeper.
The tentacles squirmed toward me.
The sight sent a chill crawling down my spine.
Hold on, time out. Time out.
[Would you like to exit the Tower?]
Emergency evacuation.
‘Exit exit exit!’
I screamed it in my head, and the scene before my eyes shifted.
My room.
I stood there, gasping for breath.
“Haah…”
Nearly died there.
[You have failed the Nightmare difficulty 1F Hidden Route clear. (2/3)]
[Three failures will permanently seal the Hidden Route.]
Messages floated before my eyes.
So that old man was the hidden boss after all.
“That insane old geezer.”
A barrier, controlling goblins, the floor turning into a swamp out of nowhere.
He was using all kinds of bizarre abilities.
Given how he’d been going on about test subjects, he was some kind of dark mage, wasn’t he?
The Hidden Route was on a completely different level from the normal clear.
‘Three failures and it’s sealed…’
It seemed like I only got three total attempts.
The one silver lining was that I could get out alive.
…I’d have to try again.
With two chances left, I needed to find a way to bring down the mage within that window.
“How do I beat him?”
I sat on the edge of my bed, arms crossed.
My skill was useless against the barrier.
If the barrier could block a fiery explosion, there was no way smacking it with a sword would do the trick.
First, I needed to deal with the barrier somehow before I could even touch the old man.
With the tools I had, it seemed impossible.
“Seo-hyeon, are you up? Come eat breakfast.”
I’d been lost in thought until morning came.
Even sitting at the table eating, my mind was elsewhere.
“Stop picking out the carrots. Eat them all.”
“I am eating them.”
“Carrots are so good for your eyes. Seo-a, you have bad eyesight like your mom, so you need to take care of them.”
My sister grumbled as she poked through the braised short ribs.
No matter how many times she was told not to be a picky eater, it went in one ear and out the other.
Ugh, that little cow.
In that instant, something clicked.
‘Didn’t your master teach you how mages duel? Standing there like a fool while I completed my spell!’
Come to think of it, the old man had said that.
Completing his spell?
Did he need to go through the same Mental Concentration I did before casting?
‘He was sitting there meditating, or whatever, the entire time before he used that bizarre magic.’
That might have been his Mental Concentration.
Then what about the barrier?
The barrier had to be magic too, but he’d deployed it the instant I attacked.
‘…Ah.’
Wait.
When I first encountered him, the old man had his eyes closed then as well.
What if he’d been performing the Mental Concentration needed to cast the barrier that whole time?
And by the time he started talking to me, the preparation was already complete.
The old man had said it himself.
Why was I just standing there like a fool while he completed his spell?
In other words, when fighting a mage, don’t give them time to finish casting.
…I might have just thought of something worth trying.
*
I waited for the moment everyone in the family had gone out, then entered the Tower again.
After breezing through the goblins, I went back down into the underground passage.
I crawled as fast as I possibly could.
When I emerged from the tunnel, the mage was sitting there with his eyes closed, just like before.
The instant I laid eyes on him, I stopped time.
I completed the Mental Concentration and fired off my skill without a word.
KA-BOOOM!
The explosion tore through the cavern.
Where the old man had been sitting, only a heap of charred ash remained.
Did that finish him?
A message appeared before my eyes.
[You have successfully cleared the Nightmare difficulty 1F Hidden Route.]
It did.
I let out a dry laugh and muttered.
“I can’t believe that actually worked.”
So he really had been preparing his barrier.
Strike first, win always. That was the answer.
Now that I knew, it was almost absurdly simple.
[Fully absorbing the Power of the Floor.]
[Your Level has increased.]
[Your Level has increased.]
[Your Level has increased.]
[Your Level has increased.]
[Your Level has increased.]
[Moving to the Reward Room.]
The scenery changed.
[Difficulty: Nightmare]
[Floor: 2F]
[Level: 15]
[Willpower: 200/200]
[Skill: Flame Strike (Rare)]
My Level jumped up a lot again.
I clenched and unclenched my fist, feeling the power surging through my body.
Alright, let’s see.
What’s the Hidden Route reward?
There were several items scattered around.
I spotted a book and picked it up first to examine it.
It was a worn, old tome with geometric patterns on its cover.
[Item: Malphadus’s Spellbook]
A grimoire left behind by the mage Malphadus. Upon use, you may select and acquire one of the following skills.
[Skill: Lower Mind Control (Rare+)]
[Skill: Teleportation (Rare+)]
[Skill: Corrupted Flame (Rare+)]
[Skill: Shadow Swamp (Rare+)]
[Skill: Life Drain (Rare+)]
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